Loud Awake and Lost (5 page)

“Or maybe you just don't know what to write.”

“Maybe now I've got something.”

My cheeks went red. Again. He meant me.

“Lately I've gotten really into T-shirts,” Kai said, easily switching subjects. “Me and Hatch. We want to start a business: ‘Tao of T.' We've got the name and we know what we want to do with our massive profits, but so far that's it. No business model.”

“So can you skip to the end? And tell me the post-massive-profits part of the plan?”

The right question. He smiled. “We want to start an after-school arts center, with our T-shirt empire funding it. Underserved youth, some people call them. I just call it kids from where I'm from. I want to give them more than what I had.” He looked embarrassed, even as he laughed. “That's my dream. You're up.”

“I don't think I have one right now,” I told him.

“Not dancing?”

“What?”

“You move like a dancer,” Kai explained. He had a way of staring at me that was so curious and unflinching, I wanted to look away.

“You're right, actually. I was dancing for so long—I loved it. All of it. Being part of a troupe, running from classes to rehearsals, auditioning, seeing my name on the list.”

“What changed?”

“It stopped being fun,” I said, surprising myself with my honesty. “I got sick of stressing out about my weight. Standing in a leotard between two matchsticks and feeling like
I
was the crazy one. Or spending two hours making a chocolate silk pie, and not letting myself have one single bite because I needed to be exactly this or that many pounds. My parents lived for my recitals. I'm an only child and I hate disappointing them—but what was I supposed to do? Dance my whole life away for my parents?” I stopped. Shocked that I'd just admitted such excruciating, almost surprising, things to this guy.

And was it true? Was I always planning my exit from the dance world—and the car accident simply forced a perfect path out?

“You can dance whenever you want,” said Kai. “Recreationally, I mean. Like any sport.”

“Sure.” I didn't have any desire to tell him about the accident, either. My scars, Addington, the therapy I was missing this afternoon. There was no reason to confess everything and burden the moment.

“Anyway, you seem like you know yourself by instinct, more than by analysis,” he remarked. “So it was probably the right call. Some people use up their whole lives trying to stop caring about their parents' approval. That's not you, am I right?”

“That's…yeah.” I felt shy. Who was this guy, who seemed to have me figured out cold? And yet who wasn't trying to figure me out as one of the walking wounded? Under his gaze, I felt springy, newly sprouted.

“Anyway,” said Kai with a wry smile, “I wouldn't want to be denied chocolate silk pie. Unless it was a choice between that and a slice of pizza at Grimaldi's.”

“Or a slab of Junior's cheesecake, with strawberries.”

“A hot dog with everything from Nathan's.”

“Arancini from Spumoni Gardens.”

“Cheesesteaks at Yankee Stadium, followed by baba ghanoush at Fez.” At my puzzled look, Kai explained. “It's good, promise. Eggplant and onion. Fez is up by 161st Street, the Yankee Stadium stop. How about we go there sometime? They've got speakers in the windows and this crap, concrete dance floor—and come to think of it, everyone dances pretty crappy there, too. It's stupid fun.”

“Sure.” Was he asking me out? Or just being nice?

“We'll get you the dancing back. It should be an impulse. Like art.” And then Kai jumped up and began to move in the tiny square of the fire escape. He was a good dancer, even without music and even as he started to pull out some self-consciously joking moves.

And then it was so gentle, it was just a continuation of his dance and his fun, the way he rolled my hand into his and pulled me up to meet him so that we were standing together, facing each other.

Ice and heat pounded my temples. I closed my eyes. Opened them again.

He was still staring at me. His eyes seemed to find me at my center.

“Funny thing is, I came out here for no real reason,” I told him. “And I met you instead. It's so…” I couldn't betray myself with something corny, some “past lives” idiocy. Kai's eyes didn't break our connection, so I made myself say it. “Do you believe in coincidences?”
Fate,
I'd wanted to say. Except that
fate
was such a loaded word.

Kai checked his watch, and then he seemed to decide something. He pulled me down so that we were sitting together. He smelled so good, it was driving me crazy. “Ember, I want to answer this. I do. But I've got a new priority. I just made a promise to myself that in the next fifteen seconds, I'd either get your phone number or kiss you, or both.”

My heart was a piston. “I never give out my cell.”

“What if I give you mine? Not that this is some big deal— I hardly ever turn it on. But I do check my messages. Besides, I was watching you before you saw me. So I've known you a few minutes longer than you've known me, right? I feel like I've known you a long time.” He seemed suddenly shy. “Anyway…”

“Anyway what?”

“Anyway I think you want to kiss a stranger.”

“Ha! I'm not sure you know as much about me as you wish you did,” I challenged. Or flirted. Probably both.

“Five seconds.”

And then I decided to take hold of the moment. Quickly leaning over to kiss him before he could kiss me—and why not? I wanted it just as much—even if the nerve of acting on this sudden urge turned my face hot.

Kai's lips were warm on mine, and so I kissed him again. A real kiss. Slow enough that he could push against my mouth before I parted my lips for the pressure of his teeth against mine.

The catch of his fingers on my neck, the thrill of his hands cupping the back of my head to draw me close, and the newness of it all, the stranger's hands mouth lips tongue click
bite
shot sparkling pinwheels through my body.

“Fireworks,” he said softly. “Do you see them? They're everywhere.”

“I do; I see them everywhere.”

“Because there are no coincidences.”

And as I opened my eyes, I recalled the honey-menthol cough drops I'd take whenever I had a sore throat. How the menthol was a balm after the sweetness had been sucked away to nothing.

Kai's kiss was the same—a balm.

Mine and mine and still mine, even after it had ended.

It wasn't until I'd jumped off the J train, my mind still in a sandstorm of him—
Kai, Kai, Kai, who are you, Kai?
—that I remembered.

Friday Folly. My house. Holden and Rachel.

The moon was a visible sliver when I turned on my phone. Five voice mails. Two were from Rachel and three were from an increasingly tense Mom—the last with the bass-note rumbling of Dad in the background as Mom pleaded with me to please call them back.

Where had the time gone? I couldn't make sense of it. It was past seven—two hours snuffed out. My muscles were kinked and knotted. I tried to piece it together. I'd watched the sun sink into a warm rainbow sky while I was out on the fire escape. Then I'd left Kai—was it dusk by then?—with twenty more minutes on the subway.

Time had buckled and flexed and swirled down the drain.

Had my phone been off the whole time? Yes, I must have shut it off right after I called Jenn.

“It's me again,” began Mom's final message. “It's gotten so late, Ember. Much too late. Will you call, please?” Then Dad's grumbling: “As soon as she gets this.” And Mom again: “As soon as you get this message. We need to hear from you. Okay?” There was no hiding the tremble in her voice.

When I saw them—Mom, Dad, Rachel, and Holden, all gathered in the kitchen—Mom started to cry in earnest.

“Oh, Mom.” I hugged her and she clung to me in a damp clamp of relief. “I'm really sorry. I lost track of time.” Which sounded so lame, even if that was the truth.

“We sent the others home,” piped up Rachel. “There was some party they wanted to hit. But Sadie left those brownies.” She indicated the wrapped pan on the counter.

“I feel terrible.”

“We're just glad you're safe.” Rachel gave my arm a squeeze. “Not that we were all worried.” Rachel's reproach was gentle but it was there. Because yes, my mom was overreacting, but—Rachel's eyes seemed to entreat—how else did anyone expect her to act? “We ordered takeout from Mumbai Dream. It just came. I was betting hard that you'd show up hungry.”

“I
am
hungry.” The takeout was lined up buffet-style, lids off, but nobody had touched a thing.

Holden came around from the other side of the kitchen island. I'd been over-aware of him from the moment I'd walked in the door, and now I let myself observe him. He looked great.

“Emb.” He reached for me, a quick, firm hug.

“Loving the five o'clock.” I let my fingers brush the scruff of his chin.

“Thanks.” He rubbed at it sheepishly. There was something else about him, too, something new—an elegance. Maybe it was simply the fact that he was out of his parents' house, living at the NYU dorm. Or maybe it was just that I hadn't seen him in a while, and I missed him.

“I'm really sor—”

“No worries.” Then he tweaked my ear, something he used to do back when we were going out. It seemed natural—but I could feel Rachel absorbing the intimacy of it.

“Kids, I'm starved,” said Dad. “Let's eat.”

That's when I spied tonight's Folly ingredients—brown rice, cans of chickpeas, red and yellow bell peppers, scallions—heaped on the counter. Waiting for me. I felt horrible thinking of my parents pacing up and down the aisles of the grocery store with my list of items, fussing over brands of long-grain rice, accepting and rejecting onions and peppers, all for a dinner I hadn't bothered to make. “Wow, I really screwed up. I didn't mean to—”

“We know you didn't mean to.” Dad looped his arm around my shoulders. “We're just glad you're safe.”

“Where were you again?” Rachel cut in.

“Just walking around.” My racing heart would have betrayed me, if anyone had heard it, as I began to heap my plate with garlic naan bread, basmati, tamarind sauce, palak paneer, and then the korma glopped like the world's most delicious baby food on top—with a glass of mango lassi so it all went down sweet.

It was inexplicable that I'd lost that time. I thought it had been an hour or so. It would upset everyone if I told them that. It frightened me. “I missed my stop on the way to therapy. So I got out at Bushwick. There was a club…something I wanted to check out.” It was then that I remembered—I'd gone looking for memories of Anthony Travolo.

Strikeout on that front. There had to be an easier way.

Nobody spoke as plates were filled and everyone sat around the kitchen table. Rachel seemed to be taking extra time ladling out her precise portion of tikka masala. “I haven't been to Bushwick since we played PS 480 the first weekend in February. You weren't there.” Her voice seemed clenched. Had Rachel asked me to come see her play basketball, and I hadn't? And early February landed smack in the black hole of memory.

“What about a dance space near Myrtle Avenue?”

“If you went clubbing in Bushwick, it wasn't with me.” Yep. Clenched.

Holden saved it. Yes, there was definitely a new elegance to him, as he deftly switched topics and began telling a story about his NYU dorm's resident advisor, Raphael, who slept every night rolled up naked in his oversized raccoon coat. Which was fine till the night of the fire drill.

The story even got Mom laughing.

I sensed the whole table breathing easier. Holden had brought some star power, for sure. He'd really changed. Usually more of a listener and question-asker, Holden worked the room smoothly tonight, flirting just enough with Mom and jousting over politics with Dad—but then backing off, whew, before Dad got what Mom called “stentorian.” It had been so long since I'd seen Holden and Rachel together, and I loved watching their old cousin routines, especially how Holden stood up to her in all the right ways, teasing her about her “Executive Decisions” and her general bossiness, but never taking it too far—the way Claude often did, so that she got sensitive and masked it by being prickly.

And when it came to me, Holden was careful. He made a point of not discussing our reconnection while I was at Addington. Nobody had a clue that we'd been in such close touch. When Holden answered Smarty's tossed-off question “So, Hold, are ya seeing anyone?” with an equally casual and joking “Do Canadians count?”—a direct reference to Cassandra Atwater that only I got—I attempted to strike a mood between curious and relaxed.

Inwardly, though, I crimped up with resentment. Why had Holden even acknowledged Cassandra? Why did he want to prove to everyone that he'd left me behind? Why did I care? Did I care? I was so confused. Kai's golden-brown eyes were like lanterns, beaming me back to earlier this evening.

“You should bring Cassandra by for the next Friday Folly,” I said instead, trying to sound like the chilled-out ex-girlfriend I wasn't sure that I was, as I stood up to pick through the near-empty container of korma. “And this time I won't space out. This time, amazingly, I will actually be here.”

“Mmm,” said Holden. “Could be fun.” But I couldn't tell if he really thought so.

It wasn't until after my parents had gone up to bed and Rachel had slipped away to the kitchen to polish off the saffron rice pudding and not-so-secretly check the Facebook status of her brand-new-big-fat-crush-who-she'd-actually-known-since-sixth-grade, Jake Weinstock, that I let myself drop the cool-ex mask a little. Downstairs and tucked into the sectional while Holden scrolled the On Demand menu, I caught the wave of a hundred other Friday nights, back when we were a couple.

“So where
is
Cassandra hiding out tonight? Did you ask her to Oktoberfest already?”

Holden kept his eyes on the television screen as he reached back, grabbed my knee, and squeezed—a horse bite, my gramps used to call those.

“Cut it out! It was a friendly question!” I gasped.

“Not yet. I'll ask her when I'm ready.”

“Does she know you're at my house?”

“So what if she does? Or doesn't? It's not like something's going on with you and me. Right?” As Holden looked at me, I felt chastened, like a puppy in need of a tap on the nose.

“So you're saying it's serious with Cassandra?”

“Enough—you're worse than Rachel. There's nothing holding it back, I guess.” He paused. “Now watch me change topics—what made you go all the way to Bushwick this afternoon?”

“I missed my stop. But I'd been there last year for some dance thing or party that I didn't remember. And so I got out, thinking I'd catch some kind of déjà vu.” But instead I'd met Kai. Which was more private, even, than my quest for the past—and a lot more difficult to explain.

“Listen, I don't want to sound obnoxious. But just for the next coupla months, I think your folks'll be two cats in the washer every time they can't find you. You know they were at the theater when your car went over the bridge? Their cell phones off. By the time the play ended, you were already in the OR.”

“Right, I know.” But I hadn't known. Or I'd forgotten.

“It sucked, Ember. To see them going through all that anxiety tonight of wondering where you were—especially when you had no real reason to be out late. I just feel like I had to say something to you.”

“You're right.” Except it had started with a reason—I'd wanted to chase down Anthony Travolo. The ghost of Anthony Travolo. But obviously I didn't want to confess that part of it. Not to Holden, anyway. I took a breath. “I'm glad you said something. I am.” I grabbed the remote. “Also, you never change channels when it's
The
Notebook.
This is no joke the best movie ever.”

“You're such a girl.” Holden made a face, but then sat back, regarding me as if I were an odd and interesting puzzle to solve. Which maybe I was for him now. He was scratching at his beard scruff as if attempting to get it off. “I can see your folks are different now,” he said. “I don't think parents ever totally recover from conversations about who should receive their daughter's eyes and kidneys.”

“No. That job went to another set of parents.”

Holden looked a little startled. I could feel my face getting warm. Did I sound too detached, or “emotionally miscalibrated”—the way Dr. Pipini had said I might, when dealing with personal issues? But I made myself keep talking. “I've decided to start pointing to the elephant in the room. I re-remembered what happened. Anthony Travolo.”

“Yeah. I found that out from your doctor, back when I visited you at Addington. That you'd sort of…lost…that information.” Holden spoke carefully. “How do you feel about it now?”

“Outside of crushed by guilt? I don't know. It goes back to that same thing, trying to remember who I was then. Or who he was.” I knew I had to say it, though it pained me. “Holden, what if I'd been doing drugs that night or something else that I can't remember? Messing around, driving too fast, or talking on my phone? What if the whole tragic thing was just completely because of me being stupid or reckless?”

“No.” He shook his head. “No way.”

“How are you so sure?”

“Emb, just because we weren't together doesn't mean you were unknown to me. You weren't taking drugs or acting crazy. Actually, you were doing kind of okay after our breakup—I was in a darker place, probably. You were hanging out with your dance friends, Lissa Mandrup and those people.”

“Lissa…” Lissa had been in Holden's class, and had graduated last year. She'd been captain of our dance troupe. I could see her clearly in the dance studio, those red lips, those long black braids spinning with her as she executed a perfect pirouette. She'd always been a bit of a free spirit, fun and quirky. I hadn't known her well. At least, I hadn't thought I had.

Wow, that was something—friends with Lissa. She was studying dance full-time now, over at ABT. Maybe I could get her new email. No doubt Birdie had it. Though that would mean emailing Birdie…and I wasn't sure I was ready yet.

Holden's arm was around my shoulders. I'd missed that weight. It wasn't until Kai had kissed me this afternoon that I realized how much I'd missed boys in general. Holden's clean, cotton T-shirt smell could be intoxicating. But when he shifted his arm to pull me in, I winced.

Immediately, he let go. “You hurting still?”

“I'm achy tonight. Like maybe I slept weird on myself.”

“Want me to get you some aspirin? Anything?” Holden peered at me, and his good looks struck me fresh—he could have modeled for one of those preppy catalogs. With the golden retriever at his side and a Martha's Vineyard breeze at his back. Except Holden wasn't vain. The furthest thing from. He'd never tried to be anything other than his own sweet self.

“No, thanks. I'm good.” I stretched out. Just like old times. “It's only…after a day like today, I can't stand not knowing myself at that time,” I confided. “It's so frustrating, that this sliver of me has been spirited away. And I think I was changing. Really changing.”

“Changing how? Talk to me.”

“It's little things. Hints and whispers. But I came back from Addington to find this poster in my room. You know that group Weregirl? I listen to their music all the time now. And when I was in Bushwick, I went to check out this dance club I'd been to. And I didn't remember it exactly, but I could swear I'd been there before. The thing is, I'll follow any clue because I keep thinking I'm missing something. Something big. Some, I don't know, elemental piece of myself.”

I could sense Holden working through his words. “I wish I could help you with this. You know how much I'd want to. We broke up last Thanksgiving, and in January we weren't hanging out. We were really trying to give each other space.”

“Right, I know. Dr. P says it's natural, almost normal, that I've blocked those weeks before my accident. He promises I'll get it back. I've looked at calendars. My last memory sputters off around the end of December. And January, forget it—it's gone. Like it never happened. Bits and pieces start creeping in in late February. After I'd been at the hospital for about a week.”